When head football coach Brian Kelly pointed out a difference in priorities between Louisiana State University and Notre Dame, where he previously coached, , his comments drew immediate reaction. Now, he says academic excellence is part of what drew him to LSU.

“The whole landscape there is different than it is here. It just is,” Kelly said in the ESPN interview. “There are priorities at Notre Dame. The architectural building needed to get built first. They ain’t building the architectural building here first. We’re building the athletic training facility first, [and] we’re in the midst of a $22 million addition to our athletic training facility.”

“It’s something I said we needed, and we went and immediately raised the money,” Kelly added.

Many believed the coach’s comments implied academic facilities are not a priority for the university and responded with immediate criticism.

Some said Kelly was “saying the quiet part out loud” and pointed out that LSU has a huge deferred maintenance problem — to the tune of approximately $650 million in repairs required across campus. Its decrepit library with a famously leaky roof is slated to be destroyed and replaced if the state continues to fund the project.

For years, students and faculty working in neglected buildings have looked at the expansion and upgrades of LSU’s athletic facilities and questioned what the true priorities are at LSU.

For many, Kelly’s comments finally put those feelings into the open.

“On one hand, it’s good that Kelly understands the obvious — that Louisiana and LSU care far more about football than academics,” mass communication professor Robert Mann wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “On the other hand, he seems to think it’s marvelous.”

“Maybe a new architecture school would be good for LSU, they seem to need a new architect of the team,” X user Blaine Bonis posted, referencing LSU’s 45-24 loss Sunday to Florida State.

Given the opportunity to clarify his comments, Kelly initially maintained he did not mean to imply athletics are or should be favored over academics.

“My comments was that there was a priority placed on excellence, excellence both in academics and athletics,” Kelly said in an interview with the Illuminator. “That’s what drew me to this job.”

But when it was pointed out his comments strongly imply LSU does not prioritize academic facilities, Kelly said his words have been mischaracterized.

“If you look at many of my statements, my reason for coming was my conversation with President Tate and his commitment to academics and excellence … from day one, the allure for me was that commitment to both on and off the field.”

“It’s a balance,” Kelly said when asked whether the school should prioritize academic facilities. “I want excellence in both academics and in athletics. That balance is going to be, at certain times, you’re going to add to both of those.”

LSU President William Tate stood by the coach, saying he feels Kelly’s sentiment was misstated.

“We, along with our legislature and donors, have most certainly prioritized capital projects for LSU academics and our Scholarship First Agenda, leading to a $333 million investment for a new science building, a new library, the Agricultural Innovation Center, and renovations for the School of Veterinary Medicine,” Tate said in a statement to the Illuminator. “We remain steadfast in our dedication to supporting our academic and research endeavors.”

LSU has been criticized for not including its library in its funding requests to the legislature until last year and for looking to the state for money to build a new . While the arena was not included in the university’s official capital outlay request, lawmakers on the committee that handles the budget said LSU administrators and board members requested the funds.

Earlier this year the legislature approved $1 million in cash for the Pete Maravich Assembly Center to plan improvements and $50 million in the lowest priority category of funding, which would have to be reappropriated in a future year. Lawmakers also gave their OK for another $50 million in fees and self-generated revenue. But because the project is listed as a Tiger Athletic Foundation project, those funds will not be dispersed, as it is illegal for a private entity to receive fees and self-generated revenue.

The legislature also approved $3.2 million in state funding to replace its library, along with nearly $150 million in lowest-priority funds that would need to be reappropriated once the new building is under construction.

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But here at ����Ӱ��, we thought we’d use the occasion of March Madness to celebrate top schools for an entirely different reason — elevating graduates into the workforce and empowering social mobility. 

Colleges vary widely in how well they set graduates up for career success and aid them in climbing the “income ladder.” Recently Jorge Klor de Alva, president of the Nexus Research and Policy Center, worked with the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights dataset to match and analyze data from thousands of colleges as well as millions of income tax returns to determine every school’s ability to take students born to parents in the bottom 40 percent of income distribution and to help them go on to achieve earnings in the upper 40 percent of household income by their early 30s. 

By identifying the percentage of students who made this ascension, Klor de Alva was able to compare schools in an apples-to-apples fashion in a reimagined March Madness bracket. 

“A score of 0.50 on our bracket means 50 percent of students whose parents were in the lowest 40 percent were able to climb to the top 40 percent in earnings,” he wrote in a recent essay. “Our Social Mobility Tournament Bracket spotlights the extent to which disadvantaged students enrolled in the selected colleges have managed to reach family-sustaining earnings 10 years after leaving the school.” 

As we enter Sweet 16 weekend, here’s what the finalists would look like if used Klor de Alva’s social mobility percentages to determine winners: 

In real life, Bryant University’s basketball team lost their First Four game and failed to progress in the brackets. But, after seeing our “Social Mobility Tournament,” Bryant would be the 2022 contest winner if the focus was celebrating schools that helped students prosper.

For context, here’s the full March Madness bracket, scored by social mobility percentage (click to enlarge): 

Of note: UCLA, which previously won our Social Mobility Tournament in 2017, makes it all the way the Social Mobility Sweet 16 before being knocked out by Wisconsin’s Marquette University. 

To learn more about the calculations, the rationale and the importance of celebrating schools in moving students up the ladder, read Klor de Alva’s deep dive right here.